Today, the US Senate voted 57-42 to block the Trump Administration’s economic bribery of the Russian oligarch and close Putin ally Oleg Deripaska. But the vote needed to clear a 60-vote threshold, and thus failed. 11 Republicans voted with the Democrats. Anyone care to guess who the sole missing Senator was?
Yup, it was Bernie Sanders - whose campaign was famously a recipient of Russian assistance (complete with a high ranking campaign official who previously worked for Russian interests in the former Soviet bloc) - and who himself promoted falsehoods on Russian trolls.
So why did Bernie Sanders miss the vote? Sanders’ spokesman would like to assure you that Bernie was busy. He was taking a meeting with former campaign staffers who have - thankfully - exposed the culture of sexual harassment and violence in his 2016 campaign. It was important, and Sen. Sanders had to miss the vote.
As Rachel Maddow would say, bullpucky.
Bernie Sanders could have scheduled the meeting with his former staffers before or after the vote - given that addressing it is more than two years overdue, it would have been nice had he done it oh I dunno, during his campaign maybe? But since he was too busy running around the country leading the revolution to address a culture of sexual violence in his own campaign, he could have addressed it after … he wasn’t a candidate anymore in 2016. Or you know, some over seven hundred odd days since. But no, it had to be done when the Senate was voting on overturning Trump’s relaxation of Russia sanctions? If it had to be, he could not be excused for 15 minutes for a pivotal vote on a matter core to our democracy?
No. Nope. Not buying it.
Also not buying the dumb excuse that he “voted for it yesterday”, which was a procedural vote to move forward, not an actual vote on the actual resolution of disapproval.
The truth is that for Bernie Sanders it was a happy coincidence that his meeting to address sexual violence in his campaign and the Senate vote on the sanctions on Deripaska’s companies happen to be at the same time. Bernie was certainly embarrassed by the release of information about his campaign’s bro-culture resulting in sexual violence (shocker there) - though evidently not enough to come up with any thoughtful responses when asked about it.
But he’d rather embarrassing facts about sexual harassment he encouraged (through his campaign) be the story than the debt he owes to Russia and Putin for helping smear Hillary Clinton. He would rather talk about sexual violence than take a vote to displease Vladimir Putin.
Sound like anyone else to you?